A Portrait of the Blockade through Genre, Nature-Morte and Landscape

Translated by Polina Barskova and Kevin M. F. Platt

Past the Andreevsky Market, During the Blockade, there walked a man. Suddenly: an impossible vision: The smell of soup, specter of soup! Two sturdy broads Pouring soup into dishes; People drink, throw themselves upon it, Staring into own eyes. Suddenly the militia shows up — Knocks dishes from hands, Fires into the air: People, you are eating human meat! Hee-uman meat! Broke the broads’ puffy hands, Led ’em off to the firing squad; They walked away and softly moaned, And from their eyes wolf paws Scrabbled at air. The man was too late to enjoy a bit. Bird pecks from ground — all the worse for it. And he set off, stepping across the dead, Or around them, like puddles.

2. Nature-Morte

A twilight of rubbish splashes into the window. The boy hunches up: he has no patience. The boy checks the boiling pot, its gurgling sounds: What do we have today? We have a cat! When she asked, he said “Rabbit.” When she ate, he laughed. Wildly, madly. He died soon. And you on the air Sketch with the charcoal nature-morte (yes, indeed!) A candle, a fragment of carpenter’s glue, A bread ration, a handful of lentils. Rembrandt! I want to live; I want to pray. Even if turning into ice, into salt, into stone.

No longer even a brother or a father — They were leading a shadow, Pressing the muzzle right into his cross. Shaking just like a hanging bare bulb, From the wind through the floorboards.

Behind this damp blue paint is yellow, and then green; Don’t scrape through to the other side — it’s pointless. There’s just stucco and hell fumes. Here, chomp on this, a pinkish-potato color. My very own bone — there’s nothing else for you. Blockade! What have you devoured? Tell me: Blue rime-frost from the stones, Worms, horse-muzzle, Cat tail? By barrels of human hands, clumps of hair, Nourished. By ravens, stars, smoke, By wood, like a carpenter moth, By iron, like rust. And in the yard they slaughtered a man without a knife Just like just that. From the wound, smoking, poured a voice. It sang about mustard seed and breadcrumb, About blood’s soul. Beneath weak northern lights The sky worked its jaws. Blockade devoured The soul, like the trapped wolf its paw, Like the fish a worm, Like bottomless wisdom words … Return to us all those who’ve been taken away In a wobbly truck’s bed, Ringing, like frozen lumber.

Good Friday. Empty, hungry church. The deacon’s voice has dried up; he’s nearly lifeless. Resounding shades bring out the holy shroud — The priest shakes his head: “Now I see the light, I comprehend — You rose from death in sickness; You cannot recover. Death to you all.” My blood’s turned to ice wine, Ouroboros has bitten through his tail. Teeth scattered across the sky In place of cruel stars.

The translation projects represented in this feature on contemporary Russian poetry have been made possible by a high degree of close, lived contact — contact that circumvents and short-circuits older systems of baffles and filters (while, perhaps, instituting new ones). In this feature is translation as a form of intimacy. The result, a small sampling of which is included in the essays and translations published in Jacket2, is a new injection of the writings of contemporary Russian poets into the American scene, and a glimpse into formerly remote Russian poetic counterpublics.